Guild Wars 2

Have been absent from the game about 2 years or so, and I’m not sure I wanna get Heart of Thorns yet, so curious, how mandatory is this addon for those activities I’m interested in? Builds I checked suggest current metas with new specs from this addon, but is vanilla still viable?

Vanilla builds can still get you through dungeons and fractals. Depending on your class you may be more or less disadvantaged, but you can still do it since this content doesn’t require a whole lot of optimization. People with HoT will probably be more effective than you though.